Car appreciation... the aesthetics, the engineering, etc

There's a Gemballa Cayenne I walk past occasionally on my way from KGX to work. Tasteful it most definitely isn't. I'll try and get a snap of it one day. Supports your new=bad old=good theory as it can't be more than a few years old.

my dad's first car when he moved to the UK. terrible rust problems

I just fitted 5mm spacers to my front wheels- exactly the same ones that are fitted to the GT3 from the factory.

The lower the octane of the fuel the more of said fuel the car will use.

Citation needed. Generally speaking lower octane fuels have a higher calorific value, but are more inclined to detonation. Unless your car's ECU has knock detection, and backs off the ignition timing significantly with lower octane fuel, it won't affect consumption rates. However, it may well up limiting maximum boost in an engine with knock detection and turbos.

Pretty much that, the higher the octane rating the higher the temperature before pre-ignition (Knocking/Pinking) will occur. Most modern cars ECU's will continually advance ignition timing to an optimum level until knock sensors pick up any knocking occurring then back it off a bit, so cheaper lower octane fuel will allow knocking earlier ergo, timing retarded earlier resulting in lower performance and slightly higher consumption

Nice 3.0 csi spotted today.

Love them but go for fortunes now.

Pistons - the performance increases fairly dramatically as the expected life reduces. Rings can be made narrower, skirts reduced to negate friction and pins can be shorter, therefore lighter.

We need to tell Cosworth what mileage we want to get out of a set of pistons before rebuild, question is what is reasonable - what would you chaps buy?

Would 50,000 miles be an acceptable lifespan? Bear in mind this would be an extremely high-performance version of a sports car engine, and I've done 11 thousand miles in mine over three years.

Or would lower be ok?

This isn't going in a daily driver - I think you could go lower. Probably quite a bit lower.

The point at which it is recommended to rebuild an M96 engine is 100,000 miles - they can go far beyond that, but the risk of spinning a rod bearing increases dramatically (it's main bearing wear that is the primary reason for the rebuild interval).

Halving that sounds reasonable to me, given that it would take me 15 years to do that mileage I'm bound to rebuild the engine before then anyway.

The total seal piston rings in my rally car last about 10k.

I think if I was replacing a high cost item (like 6 expensive pistons) overly frequently the novelty would wear off quite quickly

Miles or Km?

And what would you say was expensive for a piston?

Miles.

I’m not sure - maybe Porsche owners quantify expensive differently to me

It depends what your market is ultimately. If its your average joe, a rebuild every 50k will put them off.

It’s a subset of a subset (of a subset, possibly), basically people who could buy a GT3 but decide to build their own version

For a competition engine, that is good. Or am I out of sync that engines were a season or two. Or till they blew.

It’s definitely not awful, there are other elements of the car though which are much more highly strung though, like the clutch

Been a few years, ok decades that I was involved with rallying then racing.

Have had a few drinks, am trying to decide if i wasted the money or should have spent the money on coke and hookers.

Then they're likely aware of the pitfalls to having a race engine and actually 50k is not the worst

To some 50k can be a life time.

Last set of pistons I had made were from mahle, the chap I dealt with was a lancia enthusiast and when I talked about what I wanted, he went off and we spent ages discussing materials and specs. What I paid for 40 pistons, ring and gudgeon pins, 10 sets of four, I believe was cheaper than they should have been. The mahle guys are helping me still. Lots of video chats and calls to people who really know there stuff and really helped me go for my dream.

I have never had lots of money tied up in rally cars, I have kept the same one and developed over a long time, and only really done local events.

By comparison, the guy who regularly wins the British tarmac championship is selling everything, a Ford Fiesta WRC, two different spec mk2 escorts and two low mileage Sierra RS500 Cosworth road cars, a total of £535k +VAT currently

Define lots of money?

Learnt that money buys reliability and that beats mediocre talent. Which is hard toget over and suspect I never have.

Maybe like 8k tied up in a decent spec FWD clubman stage car, which i don't think is bad considering the price of some other stuff with similar capability

Hey, am not saying anything more than I wish I had more talent, more hair, more youth...

i think that goes for all of us no?